Posts Tagged ‘Sam Rubin’

Although the two URLs don’t make this clear, brand new websites samktla.com and richontech.tv were cut from the same coding cloth: Virb. The company, founded in 2010, was just acquired by Culver City-based Web hosting and cloud services provider Media Temple.

As part of last Wednesday’s Critics’ Choice Awards pre-party at 41 Ocean Club in Santa Monica, Rubin hosted a Virb “DIY Build-a-thon.” A company rep told FishbowlLA that approximate 20 media folks in attendance took a demo of the super-easy-to-use platform. Media Temple/Virb staffers were also present at the next day’s awards ceremony, showing more BFCA members what their technology can do.

“This deal signifies our mutual mission to help small businesses, entrepreneurs and other creatives build and host great ideas,” said Media Temple founder and CEO Demian Sellfors via the official deal announcement. “We see a growing trend of celebrities, critics and creative professionals building their own websites to better establish their own individual brands or companies.”

Read more

In honor of this weekend’s doubly momentous anniversary date of July 29, which is both the article author’s birthday and the date his beloved former boss Tom Snyder passed away in 2007, Michael Horowicz has penned a wonderful remembrance at tvweek.com. As the reader comments bear witness, Snyder left an indelible mark.

From 1993 to 1998, Horowicz worked with Snyder in LA for CNBC and CBS. There’s a funny story in the article about how he would accompany the talk show host to the Bel Air Country Club every Thursday night for dinner, but only so Snyder could meet his monthly required minimum member spending limit. We thought it would be fun to hear a few more anecdotes about the legendary media figure’s wide-ranging LA career.

“In 1960, Snyder was fired from his reporter’s job at KTLA,” Horowicz, who recently left WNBC in New York to pursue his own projects with business partner Susan Winston, tells FishbowlLA. “He was crushed and out for revenge. There was only one thing he could do, which was place a curse on the Los Angeles Angels, set to premiere a few months later in the American League. Both the Angels and KTLA were owned by Gene Autry.”

Horowicz says he learned about the curse many years later, in 1995, while watching an Angels game in the CBS conference room with colleagues. Snyder noticed and mentioned the curse that night during his monologue.

Read more

Take a peek at the tweet to the right. You don’t have to live in Los Angeles and be familiar with Sam Rubin‘s work to realize his twitter account was hacked, right? Especially after Rubin explicitly stated that his account had been hacked. Right?

Apparently not.

Gawker’s Louis Peitzman took a look at Rubin’s Twitter feed and decided something darker and more insidious inside Rubin’s soul was actually behind the tweet.

[T]his still doesn’t add up.

While the “fake ass nigga” tweet has been deleted, the “biggest boo boo of the year” tweet remains. Was that also posted by the alleged hacker, in which case Rubin simply forgot to delete it? Or is he, in fact, taking responsibility for it?

Read more

When Dorothy Lucey took a seat next to Sam Rubin on the KTLA Morning News today, it was like old times at Sunset Bronson Studios. During the early part of the conversation, archive footage was shown of Rubin and Lucey rehearsing in a conference room for their one-time KTLA program.

Lucey, let go from Good Day LA on May 25 after seventeen years, talked about keeping in touch with Rubin over the years. She recalled one particular teary phone conversation with him about her behind-the-scenes struggles, to which Rubin responded – “Take the money!” Lucey says she knew for about two weeks beforehand that she was going to be let go from FOX.

Read more

KTLA entertainment anchor Sam Rubin delivered a wonderful tw0-minute analysis of KFI’s suspension of Ken Chiampou and John Kobylt for their insensitive comments towards the late Whitney Houston.

This is where you could normally watch the video on this blog … but it appears KTLA.com isn’t big on that whole embed code concept.

Alas, head over to their website to view the video from Friday morning as Rubin tears KFI’s management and the conservative talk show duo a new one.

The formula for the weekly REELZCHANNEL program Hollywood Uncensored with Sam Rubin is similar to that of Real Time with Bill Maher and no longer on-air The Best Damn Sports Show Period. Bring together a colorful panel of celebrity guests to address a grab-bag of juicy topics.

Here’s a recent clip featuring actors Adrianne Curry, Sam Jaeger and Alan Thicke. This particular panel does not exactly give a ringing endorsement to the basic premise of de facto 2011 Best Picture Oscar winner The Artist:

Read more

One year after Hugh Hefner was born in 1926, the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles was the site of a luncheon at which the Academy Awards were hatched. Given Hefner’s love of movies and ongoing screening of old classics at the Mansion, it seems appropriate that this is where he will accept the LA Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award on November 17. The hotel has also been used as a filming location for everything from Chinatown to Bugsy.

Even better, there will be a one-on-one interview conducted with Hefner at the 4th Annual National Entertainment Journalism Awards. At present, the LA Press Club has not yet decided who will get to moderate the Q&A.

Hefner’s illustrious lifetime arguably pivoted on the lack of a raise from Esquire magazine. Back in 1952, he was working for the publication as a copywriter and moved on to the founding of Playboy magazine when the publication turned down his request for a modest pay increase.

Read more

The parent company of The Hollywood Reporter is putting on a big convention this weekend in downtown LA called Reality Rocks. For $35.00 a day, attendees can schmooze with a portion of the execs, casting directors, personalities, and other industry figures that keep a great many of this town’s production facilities humming.

There are also a number of celebrity panels. The one that caught FishbowlLA’s eye is a live version of ABC’s Friday night show Shark Tank, scheduled for 1:30-3:00 p.m. Saturday and moderated by man-about-town Sam Rubin. Here’s the condensed blurb:

Rubin, FUBU CEO-founder Daymond John and HDNet-Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban will challenge Reality Rocks attendees to “pitch” their business idea live, in 140 characters or less.

Read more

In an interview with KTLA’s Sam Rubin, Katherine Heigl addressed her image problems.

The Sunday NY Times interview Rubin refers to outlines pretty plainly how Heigl screwed up her rep – by (gasp!) speaking her mind:

When she told Vanity Fair that her 2007 movie “Knocked Up” was “a little bit sexist” — well, duh — the blowback was swift and severe, culminating with her co-star from that film, Seth Rogen, trashing her on Howard Stern’s radio show. Then Ms. Heigl complained about the quality of writing on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Again, duh: Shonda Rhimes, the creator of that show, had Ms. Heigl’s character, Izzie, performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a deer.

But Ms. Heigl was quickly branded a traitor. In a Hollywood twist, her publicist fired her.

The moral of the story – Hollywood likes its blondes to just sit there and look pretty. You listening, ladies?